Make hidden teacher workload visible.
Three transparent calculators make different dimensions of curriculum production and resource-development work visible in measures schools can meaningfully examine: staff hours, equivalent working days and the indicative value of that professional capacity.
The results can initially seem unbelievable. That is often because curriculum preparation is experienced as hundreds of small tasks completed by individual teachers, frequently outside normal working hours through professional goodwill and necessity, rather than recorded as one organisational cost. When activity design, resource sourcing, formatting, adaptation and quality-assurance work is multiplied across staff, subjects and teaching weeks, the aggregate is substantial. Releasing even part of that time can improve working conditions and reduce avoidable expenditure, but its most important value is educational: giving teachers greater capacity to build and sustain relationships, provide timely and comprehensive feedback that supports student growth, and preserve the energy required for enthusiastic, responsive teaching. These human dimensions matter more, not less, in an AI-rich world. The calculators do not manufacture a saving or guarantee a return. They expose the assumptions so leaders can test the scale of the work and decide how released capacity could be used.
Use the calculator that matches the decision.
The three calculators are deliberately separate. They examine related work through different lenses, and their outputs must not be added together without first identifying overlap.
Staff-capacity dividend
Applies the documented workflow differences for learning activities, performance-descriptor drafts, Core Docs and When, What, How curriculum pages to your school’s own editable activity volumes.
Model measured workflow gainsRecurring planning capacity
Models the share of existing weekly planning and resource-production time that could be streamlined and deliberately redirected to higher-value teaching work.
Test recurring planning capacityCurriculum-development comparison
Provides an ideal-world reference for the level of investment that instructional-development research indicates may be required to produce genuinely high-quality resources, then compares that labour with editable adapted-resource and CED-enabled production assumptions.
Compare development approachesEstimate your school’s staff-capacity dividend
Adjust the conservative starting assumptions below to reflect your school. The calculator applies the measured workflow differences documented above and begins with one teacher so the individual impact is immediately visible.
| Workflow | Items per subject | Items per teacher | Hours released per item | Hours released |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High-quality learning activity Starting point: one activity per week across 40 teaching weeks. | 200 | 2.67 | 533.3 | |
| Performance-descriptor draft Uses the conservative lower end of the measured range. | 40 | 11.25 | 450.0 | |
| Core Doc for senior-course monitoring Entered per teacher because not every subject requires a senior Core Doc. | Not applicable | 6.00 | 6.0 | |
| When, What, How curriculum page Uses the conservative lower end of the measured range. | 20 | 10.00 | 200.0 |
What is not included: programs, scope and sequences, assessment tasks and many other resources that are also substantially faster to design using Core Education Design architecture and tools.
This is an indicative capacity model, not an audited cash saving. The dollar figure values released staff time at the rate entered above. Real financial benefit depends on how the school redirects that capacity or avoids expenditure.
Quality and staff-capacity scenario.
This calculator starts with the school’s current planning workload, isolates the share spent sourcing and producing resources, then applies a locally selected streamlining estimate. It is intended to model recurring annual capacity, not the complete economic impact of a consultancy engagement.
Recurring planning and production capacity
Change every input to reflect your school. The most useful result is the most defensible local scenario, not the largest number.
How to interpret this result
The calculated hours represent production capacity that could potentially be redirected to instructional refinement, feedback, collaboration, differentiation and support for learners. The calculation automatically caps addressable production time at the total planning time entered. It does not demonstrate that every school will achieve the selected streamlining rate, that workload disappears, or that salary expenditure can be removed.
Curriculum-development labour comparison.
This calculator is included as an ideal-world reference point for the actual investment that research indicates may be required to develop genuinely high-quality instructional resources. It asks what volume of development labour is implied when a school creates or adapts a defined body of material, compares three editable development ratios and uses the adapted-resource model as the primary baseline. It does not suggest that schools currently fund or record curriculum development at this level.
Curriculum-development comparison model
The ratios are transparent modelling inputs. They are not fixed facts about your school and should be adjusted where local evidence is available.
| Development model | Development hours | Indicative labour value | Hours avoided against adapted baseline | Capacity value difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional development | 220,781 | $22,078,080 | Not benchmarked here | Not benchmarked here |
| Adapted or OER development | 140,141 | $14,014,080 | Comparison baseline | $0 |
| CED-enabled production scenario | 5,760 | $576,000 | 134,381 | $13,438,080 |
Instructional hours represented
Subjects per year group × year groups × instructional hours per subject.
Development hours
Instructional hours represented × selected development ratio.
Capacity value difference
Modelled hours avoided against the adapted baseline × hourly staff-capacity value.
Do not present the headline output as money saved
The large default result reflects a whole-school, whole-curriculum comparison across 5,760 hours of instruction. It is not a forecast that the school will receive that amount, remove that amount from staffing or avoid every modelled development hour in a single year. The real implementation scope, existing resource base, reuse rate, adoption, quality requirements and period of development all materially affect the outcome.
Transparent enough to challenge.
A credible calculator should invite scrutiny. These models expose their inputs, calculations and limitations so leaders can replace the defaults with local evidence and reject assumptions that do not fit their context.
Recurring workload evidence
Used to establish that planning, sourcing and resource creation represent a substantial workload category. These sources do not evaluate Core Education Design.
Development-ratio context
Used only as contextual modelling inputs. The source settings differ from routine school curriculum work, so the ratios must not be represented as verified Australian school benchmarks.
What these figures can and cannot support.
The models are decision aids. They become misleading when scenario outputs are stripped of their assumptions or described as verified financial returns.
They can reveal scale
Distributed work becomes visible when small recurring tasks are aggregated across staff, subjects and weeks.
They can test assumptions
Leaders can replace every default with local workload, staffing and implementation evidence.
They cannot guarantee return
Real outcomes depend on baseline practice, adoption, governance, quality, implementation discipline and how released capacity is used.
The next step is not to defend the biggest number.
It is to identify a locally credible scenario, examine where teacher expertise is being consumed by repeatable production work and decide what higher-value educational work that capacity should support.
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